{"id":700,"date":"2014-02-24T17:12:34","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T17:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/?p=700"},"modified":"2014-02-24T17:12:34","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T17:12:34","slug":"citizen-led-smart-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/?p=700","title":{"rendered":"Citizen led smart cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Inspired by my morning at the SciDevNet event “Making It Count: Big Data, the Open Revolution, and Public Engagment”<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The \u2018smart city\u2019 is on the ascendant again. A decade after I first heard people talk about the \u2018smartness\u2019 of cities in terms of the access to IT infrastructure, I hear it again. It\u2019s different this time. It\u2019s not about individual access to information. It\u2019s more about the individual, (or, the \u2018citizen\u2019) as a creator of data \u2013 which in the aggregate becomes valuable to the city, since it then knows all sorts of things about what people are doing, and also theoretically valuable to the \u2018citizen\u2019 if its made transparent. But how do cities get this data, and what are the power relationships behind it? Many people have been working on these questions, and some tricky conflicts have emerged.<\/p>\n

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By Ramon FVelasquez (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

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By Ramon FVelasquez (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

For example, one way of getting lots of \u2018smart city\u2019 data without asking each individual to accept or reject Terms and Conditions of Use (those documents that specify how data is used but which\u00a0 so few people read) is to\u00a0 create data brokerage models for smart cities in which the city is the data curator. In other words, a city government or other entity could agree Terms and Conditions on behalf of citizens. What is the relationship between the city government or entity agreeing the T and Cs, and the \u2018citizen\u2019 as such? Under what circumstances is the \u2018citizen\u2019 (the individual, the resident, the taxpayer?) in conflict with \u2018the city\u2019?\u00a0 Urban geography gives us lots of situations in which we can identify possible conflicts between \u2018citizens\u2019 and the city: for example the relationships between people without documentation and the cities in which they live. The people living in illegal dwellings, favelas or new developments just outside of city limits. The people contesting a council tax bill. The guy with the broken door on the Brandon Estate in Southwark who has been unable to get anyone to fix his door in the past three months.<\/p>\n

People in cities aren\u2019t automatically citizens, and they are not automatically inclined to enact their relationship to that place in a particular or acceptable way. The power relationships between them and the city could be quite contested. Even if you have the right to withdraw your data from collection by the local authority, are you likely to use that<\/p>\n

Rights and Freedoms<\/b><\/p>\n

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By Joadl (Own work) [GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-at (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/at\/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>In fact there are various rights that we may wish to consider. Rights to be forgotten, rights to be anonymous, rights to speak and listen. We might also want to consider freedoms, of which some are \u2018negative\u2019 and some \u2018positive\u2019 (following Isiah Berlin). The freedom to do things that don\u2019t negatively impinge on others is a kind of \u2018positive\u2019 liberty, where a negative liberty is the freedom from harassment and harm. Which kinds of freedom are enabled and constrained by \u2018smart city\u2019 data?<\/p>\n

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On my way back to my office at lunch, I passed a man asking for spare change in the street. I passed without giving spare change and felt a twinge of guilt. Then I asked myself what the chain of trust and relationships that linked me to that man might be, and how data might play a role. \u00a0I might assume that the man\u2019s basic needs are fulfilled through services supported by my taxes, although given the current policy frames I might not be able to count on the validity of my assumption. So let us take a private sector example: through the donations I to homeless shelters, soup kitchens and crisis support for drug users I might assume that someone will help to keep him alive under the worst circumstances.<\/p>\n

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Which one of us has responsibilities as a \u2018citizen\u2019? Me, because I am a \u2018good citizen\u2019 who works at a job and pays taxes? Him, because maybe he is born here or in the EU and therefore has right to be here? Which one of us should be accountable for the data that is collected about us? Which one of us is generating more data and what kind of data is that? I have social media feeds that provide indication of \u2018good citizen\u2019 status \u2013 meaning, I exist for the companies that are collecting data about me. I have money to spend, and the information about where I might spend it is important enough for businesses to pay for. The man in the street, on the other hand, won\u2019t have such easily monetizable traces. If his presence in the city creates data, it may well come in the form of police reports for loitering, or social work reports. Or perhaps nothing at all. Does that make him less of a participant in the life of the city? No \u2013 but it does remind us of which one of us has more control over the data that is generated.<\/p>\n

Questions of data are increasingly questions of citizenship and voice. As such they need to consider not just the financial value of data to a city or a \u2018citizen\u2019 but the relationships of power and influence that characterize our lives. \u2018Big data\u2019 are not oil \u2013 they are pieces of information about people, and our politics and policy about smart cities should consider this from the start.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Inspired by my morning at the SciDevNet event “Making It Count: Big Data, the Open Revolution, and Public Engagment”) The \u2018smart city\u2019 is on the ascendant again. A decade after I first heard people talk about the \u2018smartness\u2019 of cities in terms of the access to IT infrastructure, I hear it again. It\u2019s different this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pUfdR-bi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":703,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}